Cornelis De Jager of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Silvia Duhau of the Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de Buenos Aires have published a new paper in the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate titled:

I’m not sure if other bloggers have written about this. If so, here it is again. The paper forecasts solar activity for the current Solar cycle 24, which they expect will peak in May, 2013 with a maximum sunspot number Rmax of 62 ± 12.

More importantly, the authors write (emphasis added):

The subsequent analysis, based on a phase diagram, which is a diagram showing the relation between maximum sunspot numbers and minimum geomagnetic aa index values leads to the conclusion that a new Grand Episode in solar activity has started in 2008.”

There have been various emergency economic proposals put forward recently, in that, in order to save Mankind from an overheating Earth, we need to stop runaway greenhouse gases that are apparently warming the planet, namely CO2. The life saving idea is that we should modify our industrial output, by using less of this very poisonous and toxic substance, and then use an even more dramatic accounting method to share the pollution equally with those nations who "have" and those who "have not". The economic cost or loss involved has little or nothing to do with the outcome, as doing "something" to save Mankind from the destruction of our planet far outweighs doing "nothing".

It all sounds a fantastic idea to save the human race from certain death, but in fact it’s just another ideological panacea. This is all designed to keep up the momentum that man is changing the Earth's climate to such an extent that unless the Human race do something now, we are all going to die. There is another way to look at this situation, and that is, it has become another version of the Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Emperor's New Clothes". The Emperor, or to use this analogy, the principal so called climate scientists, are on display to the main stream media, the media report what they have been told, and in turn inform the public at large that the Emperor is looking great in his new clothes in spite of being totally naked. Naked being the description used for a complete lack of scientific evidence to support this label of scientific office.

NASA will hold a press conference Thursday (Aug. 18) to discuss "new details about the structure of solar storms and the impact they have on Earth," space agency officials said in a statement.

The briefing this week will review new observations from several NASA spacecraft, including the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (Stereo), that currently keep a close eye on the sun, agency officials said in the statement released today (Aug. 16). [Stunning Photos of Solar Flares & Sun Storms]

Thursday's briefing will be held at NASA's headquarters in Washington and will include presentations from several space weather experts. They include:

The news briefing will begin at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) and will be broadcast live on the NASA TV cable channel, as well as webcast on the agency's NASA TV website.

The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle (the current season is called Solar Cycle 24) and has erupted with several major flares in recent weeks. The solar cycle will peak in 2013, NASA scientists have said.

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

Figure 1: Comparison of solar activity (blue curve) and the Asian climate development (green curve, delta 18O of a stalagmite in a Chinese cave) for the last 9000 years (both curves normalized). One clearly sees a good agreement between the two curves, which stgrongly suggests a significant climate impact by the sun. Figure from Steinhilber et al. (2012).

The IPCC thinks the sun plays nary a role on climate and that anthropogenic factors explain almost the entire warming since 1850.

It’s been completely ignored that Gerard Bond was able to show more than 10 years ago that the last 10,000 years have been characterized by a global temperature roller coaster that runs up and down in sync with solar activity (Bond et al. 2001).

Provides a detailed introduction to the dynamics of the Sun and how it affects Earth, both physically and culturally

The layouts and visuals in the book are truly stunning and the book includes a number of images never published before
Contains additional information and a large number of animations to go on SpringerExtras

The center of our Solar System is a star, one among billions of stars in our own galaxy. This star, which we call the Sun, gives rise to all life on Earth, is the driver of the photosynthesis in plants, and is the source of all food, energy, and fossil fuels on Earth.

For us humans, the Sun as seen with the naked eye appears as a static and quiet yellow disk in the sky. However, it is in fact a stormy and variable star and contributes much more than only light and heat. It is the source of the beautiful northern and southern lights and can affect our technology-based society in many ways.

The Sun is, like astronomy in general, a good entrance to natural science, since it affects us in so many ways and connects us to many other fields of science, such as physics, chemistry, biology, and meteorology.

When the Greek poet Homer was writing The Odyssey around 2,800 years ago, the Earth went through an abrupt period of cooling, caused by the sun - and the same could happen again soon.

Scientists at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences analysed lake sediment in Lake Meerfelder Maar, and found direct evidence of a sudden cooling caused by a 'solar minimum'.

Some scientists suspect that the current period of high solar activity - including increased sunspots and solar storms this year - will be followed by a 'minimum' period, which could even cause an Ice Age.

“In the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been going in opposite directions.”

First of all, Dr Jeff Masters, as a PHD in METEOROLOGY and someone running a business, is someone is naturally have respect for. You don’t accomplish what he has without having to face an overcome challenges. So I look at this differently than some of the ignorant or deceptive missives from others I have challenged before on this site, many from the climatologists that make statements that show me they don’t look at the weather.